Arts & Entertainment

Best Band to Die in the Past 12 Months St. Louis 2007 - Corbeta Corbata

You could've called the late Corbeta Corbata a punk band, or a hardcore band, but that would have left out most of the truth. They warped the loud-fast-dumb tenets of hardcore into a serrated instrument of absurdist torture. Any chump can get on your nerves with a couple of amps and a drum kit, but Corbeta Corbata brought its own kind of hooks to the whole mess. Like napalm, their disturbing anti-grooves stuck to you, but only to do more damage. But even inveterate scene boosters like Corbeta Corbata can't toil in obscurity forever. Bassist/singer Ben Smith scuttled off to Kansas City for school after six years, one album and dozens of memorable shows. For once the St. Louis rocker's lament is more than a lame excuse: If they'd been born somewhere bigger, who knows how far Corbeta Corbata might have gone?